Quite deliberately not. In primus, armed slaves often don't stay slaves. Secondly, weapons can be sold for money. Thirdly, never give a gun to someone unless you know they know how to use it (and a number of my girls don't).
I grant only the second is a gameplay issue, but I don't play this game entirely for the game mechanics.

Seems like I will need to train and arm my scavengers, though.
The coming update looks to be a good one, and best of all one that doesn't require a restart.
I am, however, increasingly wishing there was a script to grab the skill and trait values of everyone in the house and put them in an Excel file. Once upon a time I knew how to do things like that...